Getting up to speed, part I

My original main character is a Night Elf Druid. She started on Proudmoore, but left her guild (and most of my friends) behind when transfers to Dragonblight were offered. Since then she’s been abandoned. Now that I have paid US$25 to fix my mistake, I can look at raiding with friends again. I’ll try to keep a log of my attempts to catch up with my friends, with the aim of helping other time-poor players enjoy with their friends what time they can spare.
Krystal was 57 when she left Proudmoore. At the time, a typical instance run went something like: Start. Have friend get disconnected. Wait 35 minutes for them to get back in due the queue. Have friend disconnected again. Give up. But while Dragonblight might have been more stable, it was also more pointless. So Krystal, who was then Lilywhyte, got shelved.

I got my transfer back to Proudmoore through on Saturday morning, local time, and so Lilywhyte, now Kristall, has the potential to actually do some end-game instances. But organising instance runs has never been easy for me, so I’m really putting some effort into working out how to make it easier (read; possible without me going insane) this time.

First thing I did, even before I transferred was get a good list of instances and the “order” they’re in. This isn’t the one I found originally, but here’s one.

Next thing I did was to load up with quests for the next two instances; Sunken Temple (see description above about typical instance experience pre-transfer) and Blackrock Depths. Of course, those two instances alone can pretty much fill a quest log and there are a couple of non-instance quests I’d like to finish off or otherwise have around.

Then I dug up some info on the various armour sets. Again, I’m specifically looking at the “order” in which they should be obtained. And while I’m collecting the “tier 0” set, I’m also grinding for the “tier 0.5” upgrade.

While researching this, it became obvious that fire resistance is a major issue if I ever want to step into Molten Core, so while I’m working on the above, I’m going to be building a fire resistance set. Since I’ll be doing a Sunken Temple run this week some time, and the first good leather armour item with FR is in there, it’s a good thing I didn’t realise later how important it was. I’ll also be keeping an eye out for good stuff with other resistances.

And to make room for all the new items I’m going to be collecting, I created a mule character and basically posted it everything that wasn’t soulbound to my main.

And the final thing I did was message a friend and ask for a copy of his add-ons directory. I play on a lot of different computers and keeping up with all the popular add-ons can be tricky. Having a raiding friend with all the expected add-ons gives me a fighting chance or participating in big inter-guild raids.

FR is overhyped in MC – early on at least. Unless you’re in a guild that farms the place you can get by with your regular blues (or perhaps some epics you picked up in ZG/AQ) just fine for the first set of raids, just as long as as you can keep your distance (which being a druid I guess you can). Obviously does not apply to anything that gets up close and personal like warriors and rogues.